About 3 years ago my wife purchased me the StewMac Violin Kit. This is the one about 75% complete. Well I finally finished it!

It required installing purfling, carving the fluting/recurve, carving the mortise and setting the neck, cutting/installing soundpost, carving the bridge and fitting strings, etc. Then Varnishing.

Overall it went smooth, but there were some challenges/frustrations along the way.

Cutting the mortise and setting the neck was quite stressful to ensure it was straight and proper height, etc. but went mostly OK, I did have to add a little filler back in on an edge after I was done.

Next challenge was that I thought I needed to shape the pegs, so I attempted to do one and F-D it up. I then purchased another set of pegs and proceeded to F up another one. The next try I got the 1 peg shaped and didn't touch the other 3 originals. So for now I have a missed match set of pegs that the casual observer won't notice. Along with the pegs, the original endpin was undersized for the hole, so I had to replace that also.

Finally, varnishing, I used the Joha kit, the base layers and color layers went down beautifully, but the final clear coats were very frustrating as they would leave micro-bubbles that needed to be sanded out quite heavily. Ultimately I got it smooth and clean, but there are some imperfections that I can see and a real Luthier would notice right away, but overall it looks really good.

As for sound, well, it sounds great and projects very well with inexpensive D'Addario Ascente strings. I know I'll be swapping these out for better strings, I've actually already ordered a different E strings as this one seemed fairly shrill during initial testing.

The bow pictured is just the stock bow from the Tower Strings Legend set. I just ordered a Fiddlerman Brown Carbon Weave bow to go with this violin.

Not sure why, but the photos all rotated....